The story behind Liege-Bastone-Liege

Sometimes the mainstream “gotcha media” misses the true stories. This is never more obvious than the story I found buried in Eurosport regarding the recent Liege-Bastone-Liege. After I translated the story from what I think is French to English (and those who follow my Twitter translations of streaming videos know how spot-on it is) Spanish rider Alejandro Valverde in order to assure himself second place on the podium of Le Doyenne, “beat off Philippe Gilbert to win the sprint.”

While not entirely surprising that such underhanded tactics are employed to insure a podium position, I’m just shocked that a UCI chaperon did not spot these shenanigans occurring. I thought they were more closely monitored. And it begs the question, were any dirty deals done with Vinokourov? I just hope the rest of the media is doing their due diligence in getting to the bottom of this potentially sticky situation

As a result of his fourth place Gilbert is now sitting atop of the recent UCI rankings. Be assured I will continue to scan the foreign press unearthing any and all information on this developing story.